IMEC chip targets ventricular fibrillation detection

PARIS – European research institute IMEC has unveiled a low-power intra-cardiac signal processing chip to help diagnose ventricular fibrillation.

IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) said the chip consumes 20µW when all channels are active and features three power-efficient, intra-cardiac signal readout channels, or ECG channels. Each of these ECG channels is equipped with a precision low-power ECG signal readout circuit and an analog signal processor to extract the data of the ECG signal for detection of ventricular fibrillation.

The research center claimed that the chip includes features that improve the functionality of Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy devices. Firstly, the low-power accelerometer readout channel enables rate adaptive pacing. Secondly, to handle intra-thoracic fluid analysis, the chip includes a 16-level digital sinusoidal current generator and provides 82db wide dynamic range bio-impedance measurement, in the range of 0.1O-4.4kO with 35mO resolution, and is claimed to achieve more than 97-percent accuracy.